Investing in Alignment with your Social Values

Sounds crazy, right. Picking an invest­ment based on the com­pa­ny’s social val­ues. Isn’t prof­it, or effi­cien­cy, or some­thing you find on the bal­ance sheet more impor­tant?

Important? Yes. More impor­tant? I don’t think so.

It’s increas­ing­ly impor­tant to align our lives to a social val­ue sys­tem, and that includes express­ing our social val­ues in the com­pa­nies we do busi­ness with. Would you buy Tyson chick­en if you knew how Tyson tor­ture baby chicks? Would you buy from a com­pa­ny that used child labor?

If you won’t buy from these com­pa­nies, why would you invest in them?

You should­n’t. And, that’s not a judge­ment on val­ues that don’t align with your own, it’s com­mon sense.

Investing in align­ment with your social val­ues is one of the core prin­ci­ples of the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint. By doing so, you are more con­nect­ed to the com­pa­ny you own (remem­ber, buy­ing stock in a com­pa­ny makes you an own­er). Being more con­nect­ed keeps you more inter­est­ed, learn­ing more about the com­pa­ny than you would oth­er­wise.

In fact, we’re not the only ones think­ing this way.

In response to being chal­lenged for Starbuck’s pub­lic stance sup­port­ing same-sex mar­riage, CEO Howard Schultz respond­ed: “It’s a free coun­try. You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares in anoth­er com­pa­ny.”

Exactly right.

More and more, con­sumers are desir­ing that com­pa­nies “take a stand” in sup­port of their core val­ues. Why should­n’t investors take the same stance in respect to their own val­ues?

Companies that “take a stand” also show that they stand for some­thing more than (not “oth­er than”!) prof­its. That can only help long-term investors like us.